BOSTON, MA, August 09, 2017 /24-7PressRelease/ — Flimp Communications, a leader in digital HR and employee benefits communications, announced today the availability of PLANselect benefits plan value score, an easy-to-use, yet sophisticated, algorithm that helps employees quickly determine which employer benefit plan offerings are best for their individual needs. PLANselect helps employees choose the health plan option that will likely result in the lowest premium and out-of-pocket costs for them and their family. The value-score tool also enables employers to overcome the challenge of getting employees to sign up for high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) with health savings accounts (HSAs) because employees have access to objective data that helps them understand the value and cost-saving opportunities with HDHPs.

PLANselect was developed by a physician-led team of health insurance experts. And what they’ve done is to take a complicated, daunting task and make it comprehensible and effortless. To try the PLANselect decision tool and watch the overview video, visit the demo site here.

PLANselect is an affordable, web-based, benefits decision-support tool that helps employees and their families quickly figure out which employer-sponsored health plan option is best for their needs. The product takes only two days to implement once benefits plan details are provided by the employer or broker. There are four simple multiple-choice questions to answer. An algorithm called the percentile-of-use method is employed instead of the calculator model, which is utilized by most of the private market health plans. The main advantages of percentile-of-use algorithms are lower costs, faster implementation and far less time and information required from employees to get results.

With the percentile-of-use-algorithm method, anticipated employee medical costs, from lab services to prescriptions and surgeries, as well as unpredictable ancillary costs, are mapped against the Blue Health Intelligence database of 165 million claimants. Zip codes are used to make regional adjustments to medical costs. No personal information is necessary and all employee data is de-identified. The PLANselect analysis takes only three to four minutes to complete, and can be repeated using different medical scenarios. Upon completion, employees get a comparative value score of the available health plans, as well as a detailed breakdown of total employee costs and other plan features. PLANselect is mobile friendly, easy to navigate and compatible with most online benefits enrollment platforms. This is also the type of decision-support algorithm used by Healthcare.gov.

“Selecting the right healthcare plan will lower medical costs. With higher deductibles, rising premiums and ever-changing medical plan options, employees want access to simple, unbiased analytical tools that can help them make better choices when it comes to selecting the optimal benefits plan for their circumstances,” said Wayne Wall, CEO of Flimp Communications. “And the entire process takes only three to four minutes to complete, compared to 30-40 minutes for popular video-avatar-style products.”